Children with gay parents banned from Mormon church

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I haven't seen anything about this here, but the Mormon(LDS) church announced that children of same sex couples, or who have a parent who is in a same sex marriage aren't allowed to be baptized until they're 18 and they disown their parent or parents.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/06/us/mormon ... index.html

I'm not surprised by this, but it goes against their claim that children under the age of eight aren't held accountable for any sins, or the sins of their parents.

I live and let live.

That's all I have to say.

I love it when organised religion ultimately defeats itself when it drives people away for not being 'worthy'.

I was raised mormon, live in utah, and a majority of people i actually know are mormon or have been a mormon at some point in their life.

Most of the people i know - their reactions range from having difficulty accepting it or visibly having a hard time rationalizing it, to just being flat out disgusted and enraged by it.

What a lot of people don't understand about mormons is that the LDS church really is run like a railroad company. It is strictly top down authoritarian.

You may be thinking, ok but catholics are authoritarian too? Not nearly in the same way.

The pope leads the catholic church, but there is clear and open dissention in the ranks. There are powerful people in the catholic organization who really have a problem with Francis and the way he is doing things, and they aren't really shy about saying it. Even the cardinals, who are very close to the pope's power structure both organizationally and physically, fall over themselves to try and spin what he says in a more traditional way.

That doesn't fly among mormons. Dissent will get you kicked out. Not being able to agree with something that comes out of salt lake city is a problem that you have and you need to solve.

Catholicism has factions for crying out loud. If you want to have a mormon faction you have to resign your membership and start your own separate church.

Additionally, it is explicitly clear that the local leadership exists to represent the central leadership to the local membership, and not the other way around. This is clearly written in the handbook.

As a member of the mormon faith, you literally and explicitly have no say.

So, I would say that a large number of faithful mormons are having a really hard time coming to terms with this policy change. Possibly as many as half the membership.

It's difficult for numerous reasons. Chiefly among them, that "love the sinner, hate the sin" doctrine is actually taught in mormon sunday school. And also in large part because, as it's worded, it appears to punish children for stuff their parents did, which is really beyond the pale.

There have been some really fraught rationalizations that this somehow "protects" children from having the church drive a wedge between them and their parents by teaching them that their parent is apostate, but even in the last week it has been clear that it works pretty much precisely 180 degrees from that.

For example, one mother of two reports that her bishop went out of his way to inform her that if either of her two lesbian mothers visit with her children, she will be subject to mandatory discipline.

And that, frankly, is pretty messed up.

There are noises about mass "resignations" from church membership but if it amounts to more than hundreds of people i will be surprised.

As for myself, I'm beyond caring what religious people believe, least of all what they think about whether i am part of their church. I can find no meaning in the act of filling out some paperwork so that a meaningless field in a database somewhere in salt lake city changes from one pointless thing to some other pointless thing.

I don't care if they think I'm still a member. They can think I'm a duck. Doesn't affect me one way or the other.

I just hope the nice elderly couple that does outreach in this neighborhood comes by to talk, because then I'll have to explain that my personal morals and ethics don't allow me to associate with hate groups.

As for the brethren in salt lake city - since the days of brigham young (and possibly not during the days of joseph smith) there has been an Official Stance that the Brethren Are In Perfect Concordance. And this has always been an absurd distortion of the truth.

The reality is that they put forward a unified face at best, and at times that are less than the best, many members of the leadership simply hide their face.

My guess is that someone pushed this through with minimal oversight, and now the church is stuck with it. Because mistakes are impossible.

Some of them are culture warriors. Some of them are frightened old men who don't understand the world around them. Some of them are genuinely nice people.

http://www.hrc.org/blog/entry/new-hrc-a ... ody-link-1

Proud to say my name was on the full page add standing out against hate.

Crazy, kids can't chose there parents. Plus there is nothing wrong with gay people.

The church presidency has released a clarification that they meant primary custodial parent.

https://www.lds.org/pages/church-handbo ... s?lang=eng

Which is slightly less monstrous.

From where i sit, i don't see what prevented them from using the words "primary custodial" in the handbook.

Not going to church gives me the freedom of not having to make up my mind about this sort of thing.

It is a good thing that faith can be had outside of the institution called church, no matter what you believe.

I find it strange that some people feel that they need to be in some congregation to "do the faith thing right".

If a relation with God can not be had outside the walls of a church, or outside of a religious group, then it does not have much integrity and it is certainly not something for autistic people to pursue give our preference for silence and solitude.

Mormons often take pretty good care of each other for no other reason than a sense of duty.

And often don't give a crap about people who aren't mormons.

like any other group of people you get a mixed bag

Lets just put it this way over all I have not heard good things about mormonism in general. Maybe some of them are decent people, but they are still subscribing to a belief that I cannot condone...too authoritarian, and still Christianity things I don't enjoy.

*shrug* any time someone decides that they are God's special people, there is a risk that they will decide that means they can do sh***y things with impunity.

I've seen the mormon church pay members mortgages when they get laid off, pay for member's psychotherapy that they can't otherwise afford, feed and clothe people, get people into decent and safe housing, find people jobs, find jobs for the unemployable, etc.

I've also seen public safety officials say they'll distribute emergency response information through mormon churches, and when asked what about the 20% or so of the city that isn't mormon, just kinda shrug.